Mia had been sitting in the carriage for what seemed like hours, not being able to see much of the outside she focused on the inside while she waited. Besides her in the carriage there were a few others, all fox beastmen like herself. She assumed they were from the village, either left behind by the others as they left for still unknown reasons, or they choose to stay.

She saw two old grannies and one older man, not recognizing any of them besides the vague recollection that they were from her village, maybe seeing them in passing? She didn’t know. Next to them was one older women, a house wife she frequently saw her mother talking to while she was being held by her.

The women was clutching a smaller child while staring at her intensely, she wanted to ask her what that was about, but considered that now was not the best time with how many people might over hear them. The smaller child she was holding in her lap was a boy older than her, bruised and battered, he did not look like he had a lot of life in him, but she recognized him as one of the kids who played ball.

Moving on she saw a face she did recognize, a familiar tom-boyish girl with white hair who was also staring right at her, Riley. One of the few people in the village who even talked to Mia. She felt sad, knowing she was captured this time as well, and would have liked to talk to her but like the other one, it had to wait.

“You went missing.”

Or so she thought, Riley had spoken up, breaking the silence “What?” she asked, more so surprised she had spoken, having assumed they had been under a gag order.

“You went missing.” Riley repeated “Where did you go? Everyone went looking for you.”

Mia didn’t know how to answer that, as what would she even say? ‘Yeah, I knew the village would be invaded, I tried to save you guys but you wouldn’t listen, so I got mad and just ran away to train?’ that wasn’t going to work.

“You aren’t going to say anything? What? They told you not to speak? So what, answer me. Where did you go.” Riley said, her voice raising.

“Riley please.” The older women who was clutching the child spoke “You are going to attract attention…”

“So? She runs off and everyone goes after her leaving the village defenseless! Even the shrine maiden left… I don’t know if… If my mother made it out because of her…” she choked, starting to cry.

‘ah…’ Mia vaguely remembered last time, where Riley’s mother had died in front of her, at least this time she might be alive “It’s ok, maybe she is alive.” Mia said.

“Shut up! What do you know! Where did you even go?! Why did you leave! Everyone was in a panic!”

“HEY! Shut up in there! Silence! That’s an order!” the merchants shouts could be heard, instantly everyone’s collars tightened up. Forcing the conversation to end there.

It did not stop Riley from staring at her though, Mia knew she had to give her some answer, just didn’t know what to say. But still, her running away changed things this much? Do those people who easily left the village to look for her know how hard she tried to get them to leave when she told them all they were in danger? Really? To get all of them to leave she just had to leave herself?

She couldn’t help getting a little bit mad at that, if they all had left in the first place then no one would have gotten captured. She sighed, looking out the cage to see everyone was packing up, preparing to move. She also noticed the sky had returned to its regular blue color, the sun high in the sky. [Sanctuary] had ended and it was time to test a few things.

First, to see just how much AM fucked her. She tried to save, focusing on doing so for slot 2. This was the biggest thing, if this did not work than trying anything else would risk everything going to waste, and she did NOT want to sit through that degrading appraisal again or waste her efforts on saving the cats again. ‘Don’t want to sit through a lecture that doesn’t apply to me either…’ she thought, referring to [Fate] and [Destiny]’s interference.

[Would you like to save to slot 2? (Y/N)]

“That fu-“ She slipped, choking as the collar tightened around her neck, prompting everyone in the carriage to turn their attention to her. She ignored them, saving to slot 2. ‘There, wont have to do any of that again.’ She nodded to herself, now the only known things stopping her from saving were [Sanctuary] and the anti-magic collar. As much as she’d like to blame that on AM, she doubted AM had a direct way of killing her like the collar did.

Now that she knew that worked she questioned the other aspects of [Time], bringing up the description once more, now having the leniency to do so.

[Skill: Time. LVL 1 – Grants the authority to {Save} and {Load}. Grants one Save slot. {Save} saves the users current state to any available slot, {Load} returns the user to that state. Experience, levels, memories, and stat points gained after a save point are lost, if a moment in time is lived enough times a vague memory may remain.

Level 2 – Grants a new save slot. Memories are no longer lost when loading. Grants access to the [LOG], [Settings], and [Assist] Features.

WARNING: saving and loading in battle may cause opponents to be aware of the load.

WARNING: Due to an extreme number of deaths, accessing [LOG] at this time is not recommended, please refer to [Assist] for specific inquires or use [Settings] to limit the displayed information.

WARNING: [Settings] has sustained substantial damage during last save/load cycle, please see [LOG] for details.

NOTICE: [Assist] has been assigned to repair [Settings]. Please be aware [Assist] will be unavailable during this time.]

‘Alright…’ Saving was confirmed to work while under the effects of a non-magic sealing slave collar, she could assume loading worked as well, which was good because she did not want to deal with the pain of killing herself to go back… something that was stupidly easy to do while wearing a slave collar… moving on.

Accessing [LOG] Was a risk, as she personally experienced what happened when she attempted to do so. That information overload that exploded her brain was not a fun thing to remember, but for the sake of not taking anything AM had said as truth she decided to risk it.

[you cannot! Stop this! I want to, hold, the pet of i- ice just jump the caaaan you feel are you in the sun very berry freedom fight for jump bear! Stop the web, Jump, stay the leaving of sunshine tells all there isn’t of bunny pet good listening to jolly jump for dead Athena! Sto-all free the singing in sunshine for all you cannot honestly possible fromthemly buu-jump magic despo- be all Jump for and and and death manipulation? No, I am. For you I stay, Jump - ]

Mia woke up awhile later in a puddle of her own blood and drool “W-what happened?” she sat up, feeling her slave collar tighten around her neck as she spoke. Looking out the cage and from the carriage’s shaking, she saw they were moving, the sun setting in the distance.

“You suddenly started foaming at the mouth, bleeding from the nose, and fainted…we raised a fuss but that man the merchant was with said you were fine…” Riley said choking out the last bit.

“Sorry…” Mia said, sitting back up in her seat ‘yup, [Log] Is fucking broken’ she glanced at her health, 11, and scoffed ‘alright my ass…’ she rubbed her face clean on her dress, wiping away the snot, blood, and drool the best she could, still ignoring the stares of the other villagers in the carriage. ‘least it didn’t kill me this time…’ she sighed, debating on throwing more points into con so her experiments would be less risky, not finding a reason not to at this point she decided to slowly dump 100 points into it at a rate she wouldn’t get sick from.

While she was doing that she decided to look at [Settings] trying to open it while expecting to get barraged by a bunch of broken text.

[Settings is cur-cur-cur-cur-curently unvalable d-due to da-da-da-damged cawsd bi lst cycle, pwease snd hlp :C or wit for slf rep-re-re-fix to fin, tanks fer pa-tience]

‘….’ That was broken too, AM might be a bitch but at least she was a honest bitch. ‘self-repair huh?’ at least she didn’t need to rely on AM to eventually get that fixed, hopefully by the end of this cycle, an estimate of three years, it will be done, till then she just had to focus on what she was doing now.

For [Assist]… no, no she wasn’t touching that, and hoped she would never need to. For now, she looked out of the carriage at the passing scenery, trying to ignore the stares of her fellow villagers who were beyond suspicious at this point, dreading when they finally got the chance to speak to her.

‘hey, 1,100 health though…’